Gene Catlow comic series creator Albert Temple dies at 59

Fans of furry web comics mourned at news of the passing of Albert Temple arrived this month. This prolific creator maintained a consistently-updated web comic for over 16 years, from July 2000 all the way up to his death in March. This web serial comic, Gene Catlow, delved into the lives of a pair of experienced and respected computer technicians and their many strange adventures.

The two main characters were Gene Catalow (the author's fursona) and his rabbit friend Cotton. The first story arc revolved around Cotton finding a special coffee that unlocked superpowers within him. He's torn away from his normal life as a technician to begin thwarting assassination attempts against an ambassador being held in safe harbor in their anthropomorphic city.

Through the interactions of these characters you learn of a world of political intrigue, where human beings and anthro animals had their own cultural boundaries. Albert did a great job in making it so that you were never fed this in exposition dumps, but instead were purely arrived at through the interaction of the comic's characters.

The highest honor received for his work was a nomination for the 2006 Ursa Major Awards. Despite not winning, his dedication and persistence is exceptionally praiseworthy. Anyone who has ran a web-series, or consumers of them, can tell you: finding those that have persistent updates with good quality in story and art can be difficult if not impossible to come by.

Even if one did not personally interact with Albert in life, through the characters in his works you can see what the traits that their creator finds admirable. Just a few months into the series, Gene and his more heart-on-his-sleeve rabbit friend have shown their belief in the premise of action over words. They would stand against those that would use words to get out of work, manipulate, or plant doubts in the passions of those who did what it took to get their job done. Or, as the characters called them, “Bean Counters!”

Albert did his part in life to bring joy and wonder through his characters, and the furry fandom comes together wishing the best to an artist who has earned a well-deserved rest. May those of us left behind see the same wonder and have the same dedication to our crafts as Mr. Temple and the protagonists he crafted.

Thanks for writing this, Sonious. A lot of people have been creating memorial art of Gene - I've seen severalexamplesmyself.

Gene himself was quite prolific. The Yerf Archive holds 650 of his pieces, dating from late 1996 to the end of 2004 - a brief perusal demonstrates his deep involvement with the artistic community and the still-growing fandom of the time.

The creator of Newshounds and Albert were very close. Actually close enough that it's just me and a handful of others living in such short distance. I saw his notice about this and shared to a lot of people on twitter, thats where i figured out we're in the same area although i never met them. He posted nice rememberance (can't find right now on mobile) of meeting Albert for the first time many years ago. Gotta love the dedication. The art is very fun too. Pure furry. I have wanted for a while to host a regular 'comics page' but dont have time to make/solicit/commission... its a project to keep in mind.